Ep 24: How to Teach Speaking

[Music] You're listening to Expand Your Horizons, the podcast for English language teachers and wanderlustin delgers. This is Lauren and Shannon, teacher training duo of Tefl Horizons.com. Each week we bring you teaching advice, travel tips, and inspiring stories from around the globe. Here's to making this big world a little smaller but connecting ESL teachers everywhere. [Music] Hello and welcome to Expand Your Horizons, the Tefl Horizons podcast. I'm Shannon and I'm Lauren and we are here in Washington, D.C. recording this week where we just finished a really fun workshop at Washington English Center. Thank you so much if you were able to attend and if not, you should come join us for the next one. Hope to see you there. We're going to start trying to do more of these in-person events so we will let you know hopefully we'll be at a city somewhere near you. Someday soon. Yeah. Anyway, let's get into this week's episode. We've been talking a lot lately about first reading lessons and then listening lessons and the reason I think we're so passionate about talking about things like teaching, reading, and teaching, listening is because I think it's really common for maybe when you first think about English language teaching, I think it's really common for people to think that teaching English means teaching grammar and teaching vocabulary. Yeah. Sort of the technical things. Yeah, but teaching English is not just grammar and vocabulary, granted that's a huge part of it, but there's so much more that goes into it and part of that is also teaching what we call skills. It's also important to teach reading comprehension, listening, comprehension, and also to other skills that we haven't really talked much about yet, speaking and writing. So in this week's episode, we're going to transition from talking about teaching, reading, and listening, which are what we call receptive skills, your receiving language. And we're going to transition into the productive skills, speaking and writing. So these skills in which students are producing language. So these are different and they have, there's kind of a different way to approach teaching skills, teaching, reading, or listening, or speaking, or writing. There's a different approach to them than when you're teaching grammar or vocabulary. So Lauren, how would you say they're different? Well, I think the thing to even mind when you're teaching a system's lesson, right, is that the main aim, the goal of the lesson is language. So by the end of the lesson, students will have practiced that grammar or learned that vocabulary. Whereas in a skills lesson, the main aim and the focus of the language is the skill itself. So skills lessons give students a structured opportunity to practice the skill. So let's look at speaking, for example. Students might ask you, like, why should we practice the skill of speaking in class when we do that outside of the classroom? And as teachers, we need to to think about actually why, like, what's the difference between students speaking outside the classroom and in the classroom? And my answer always is that we give them a structured approach to that skill. So in a speaking lesson, a speaking lesson is structured in a way that students will be prepared to do the speaking task well. And then at the end of the lesson, we are, we as teachers are prepared to give them really good feedback on their language through error correction, correcting the errors that we've heard throughout the lesson. Absolutely. I think that's very common, as you said, for students. And I think also for teachers, that seems like a valid question at first, which is, you know, why do we need to spend time helping students practice reading or listening or speaking or writing when, you know, it seems like they could, if they're just going to sit silently and write something, you know, why couldn't they do that at home? But you're right, it's providing students with this structure. And the thing I always like to say about speaking and writing lessons is that the important thing to remember when teaching speaking or teaching writing is that you don't want the students to feel like they should up to class, they sat down, they talked about something and then they left, right, which might very well be entertaining or it might be enjoyable for the students. They are, yes, getting some practice just in the act of speaking itself. They are, by definition, getting some speaking practice. But in just doing that, if they just show up, they talk about something and then they leave, how can you really prove that the students are any better at speaking, at the skill of speaking than they were when they first walked into class? Absolutely. So what we want to do is we want to avoid that situation of just, they come in, they speak, they leave. And we really want to think about, okay, what can we do to help students develop their speaking skill so that they feel like when they leave that lesson, they are better at speaking than they were when they came in. So as you said, a big part of that is making sure the lesson is very structured. So how are we going to start a speaking lesson? Well, the good news is that there is a suggested structure to speak in lessons so you don't have to make it up. So like any other lesson that you've heard us talk about on this podcast, start with a lead-in. Remember, your lead-in is your chance to connect the topic of the lesson with your students' experience. It helps them become interested in the topic. It raises their sort of awareness of what you're going to talk about that day. But it shouldn't be focused on anything to do with teaching them new vocabulary words or a new grammar. Nothing like that. It's just meant to be sort of a fun three maybe talks five minute intro into your lesson. So like let's imagine that we've planned a speaking lesson about, perhaps we want our students to plan a party together. So that's going to be the task later on in lesson. The lead-in might be like me I'd ask the students like oh so it's the last great party that you went to. Yeah. Talk to your partner. Perfect. And then they record that box to the class. Something very keep it light in your lead-in and keep it really providing a context for for the lesson. Yeah and I just want to jump in here because it could be a touch confusing that even though the students are speaking to each other in the lead-in, this is not the speaking task yet. This is sort of like a light speaking exercise. In which yes the students are physically speaking but as always with skills work just because the students are physically speaking about something doesn't mean that that is a genuine speaking task the way we're going to define it in a speaking lesson. So it's not terribly structured yet. We haven't given the students any particular support for this speaking task. We've just given them a topic. Think about the last good party you went to. Talk about it for two minutes with your partner. And honestly even during that during that stage I'm not on top of them you know to make sure that they're producing language at that point. I might even use those two minutes as an opportunity to set up my board for the next stage. We're just letting them warm up at this point and get engaged with the topic of the lesson. Correct. So anything that has to do with parties for this particular hypothetical speaking lesson we're talking about is going to work fine. Absolutely. Yep. Right. Okay so that's your lead-in kind of the warm up for the students. Now they're aware that okay we're you know this lesson has something to do with parties. They've gotten to engage with that topic. They've gotten to warm up and get ready. So the next thing now we can do is set the actual speaking task. So setting the task I want to be clear is different from the students doing the task because there's a lot that's going to happen in between. But with a speaking lesson it's really important that sooner rather than later the students know what the speaking task is going to be later in the lesson so that you can help prepare them for it. So in this particular lesson let's say the speaking task is the students have to plan a party together. So eventually we're going to have the students and groups of three four something like that it will probably depend on what my class size is. And the task the thing that they'll actually have to talk about is they'll have to plan a party. So I can use the example of a lesson that I've actually taught before in which this was the speaking task. So I set up the lesson in that I gave so I told the students they would have to plan a party for the last day of class and I told them that it could be you know a very exciting fun party. Money was no object all that stuff except they did have a set budget. So they had to agree in their groups on a venue they had to agree on the food they had to agree on the entertainment like the music if they would have any sort of games if they would go bowling if they would do something else. And so they had to to choose all of these things and all of these things had set prices assigned to them and so they had to negotiate with each other to agree on something that was going to be within budget. So the reason this works as a speaking task is because it required the students to speak. That might sound obvious like any speaking task you would think requires the students to speak but think about the difference for a second. What if the speaking task was just talk to your partner about a great party. Talk to your partner and talk about what you think makes a great party. Right. That's a very singular type of activity. Right. And okay yeah the students are going to speak hopefully if they're obedient they're going to talk about it. If they're interested in the topic they're going to talk about it because you told them to or because they're interested. But it doesn't really push them to speak like there's nothing that they need to accomplish in a genuine communicative way. So what we're getting at here is there's something called a communicative goal and basically what that means is there should be some kind of goal or results that the students are trying to accomplish separate from just use this language because I told you to. So it should be something more than just like we'll talk about this because I told you to talk about this. So in a task where you just say talk about a good party, yes it's something where the students are supposed to be speaking but there's no goal in doing that. I say what I think makes a good party, the other people in my group say what they think makes a good party and then we're done. We don't have to agree on anything, we don't have to accomplish anything versus this other version. If they have a set budget and then they have different options that they have to choose between that have different prices but they all have to plan one party together. Now there's a communicative goal. The goal is not just talk about this because I told you to. The goal is you have to plan a party and it has to be the best party you can plan within budget. Yeah. So that's what you really want to think about. That is the key to a good speaking task and the task itself is going to make the lesson. So you want to make sure your task has some sort of communicative goal. That's going to make it number one more authentic because there is something that students have to have to do or have to negotiate or have to accomplish with the language. That in turn is going to make it more motivating. Now the students want to speak not just because you told them to because they want to achieve this goal. They want to plan this party. And then also it's going to come up. Sorry, it's going to be useful for the next stage that we'll talk about in a second which is bringing up some helpful language that the students can use. Absolutely. I was thinking that also it acts as sort of like this. It propels the conversation forward if in some classes where students are less willing to talk or in lower level classes where they don't have maybe as much language at their fingertips, this communicative goal really can be motivating. Exactly. They're going to try. Even if they are very low level and they're not super fluent, they're going to want to try which is so magical. And it does lead nicely into the next stage. So after you set the task and you do a demo of the task. Oh right. We haven't talked about the demo yet. So there's a big difference between telling students what they're going to do later in the lesson and actually giving them an example of what they will talk about later in the lesson. So after you've kind of given them a quick overview of the task, it doesn't hurt to do a demo yourself of what the task is. Exactly. And you can think of it as a demo not just like giving instructions or hypothetically telling them like for example, maybe I talked to my partner about, you know, I want this kind of music, but then my partner disagrees and wants this kind of music. You want to make it again as authentic as possible. Like they're really watching an example of exactly what the task would look like. So that means that if the task is something where two people are supposed to be speaking together and potentially agreeing and disagreeing, you better give them a demonstration of two people speaking. So you probably won't be able to do the demo by yourself. So in order for this to be really good and really useful and really authentic, it might take some more foresight and some more planning on your part that you could even record you and another person planning a party together. It wouldn't be necessarily the full time. Like you wouldn't, let's say you're going to give the students 10 minutes to do this speaking task, you probably wouldn't want the demo to be 10 minutes. It could be a mini version of that. Maybe it's a two minute recording of you and one other person having some agreements and disagreements and trying to negotiate your idea of what makes a great party and how you want to spend this hypothetical money. But that's going to make it a really meaningful demo. If it's a speaking task where the students, for example, just have to give a presentation or let's say they have to pitch a new product, then it's a demo you could do by yourself. Sure. And to say, just make sure that the demo is the same thing, the same format as whatever the task is going to be. Because it will help setting up the speaking task later. It will make it so much easier. It also, it gives you a reason to, or it makes the transitioning to the next stage a lot easier. So after we set up the task and we've given a good demo, before we start giving students time to get into the speaking task, take a few minutes to give the students some useful language. And so it's challenging because we've all, we set up the top of the podcast that this is not a language lesson. So the goal is not to teach them grammar, it's not to teach them new vocab. But for a speaking lesson, in order to give that, the students, that sense that they've walked away from class, having learned something new, it's really important to give them something there. And so we've done a lot of talking about this planning party and negotiating with your partner what you might bring and where you might have the party and how much you're going to spend on decorations. As a teacher, ask yourself, what kind of language? So what useful phrases would our students need to know in order to be successful during the speaking task? And hopefully you'll have already used it in your demo yourself. So if I'm imagining that I'm planning a party with Shannon, and I think it's a really good idea that we, I don't know, have champagne. So I might suggest to Shannon, you know, as some of the refreshments, I think it's a good idea if we have champagne. And then Shannon might say, I like champagne, but don't you think soda would be better? So in the process of demoing the task, we've also already kind of shown students possibly, what kind of language they might use in order to do the task successfully. The useful language stage is just a chance for us to focus on that for a little while. A little while. So we're not going to turn it into a grammar lesson or a vocab lesson. I like to call it like language light, the language light to stage. That's a nice way to think of it. I like to remind my teachers that we're not going to bash them over the head with language there, but give them a few useful maybe like sentence starters. For those of you who have done some teacher training course, you may have heard the term functions. We give them functional language, which is useful language like everyday language. If that term is not familiar to you, don't worry. We're going to follow up this episode with an episode on functional language in the future. Don't worry. Functional language is just imagine some sentence starters that would help students either make suggestions or negotiate their point in party planning. Yeah. I like that way of describing it sentence starters. I think it's tempting at first to think, okay, well, the students are planning a party. So they're going to need vocabulary like balloons, venue, music, appetizers or nerves. I don't know, something like that. Maybe. But a lot of that will probably come from the material itself. And if you really feel like students are going to need that much vocabulary, maybe you just need to pick a different context where they're more familiar with a lot of the general vocabulary that will go along with that context. What's going to be the most useful for them is really like Lauren said, if you think about what they need to do, so going back to that communicative goal, in this case, the students need to agree on something. They need to negotiate and plan this thing together where they're all in agreement at the end, then clearly they're going to need phrases for agreeing, for disagreeing, for asking other people's opinions, you know, for hedging a little bit like, well, I like that, but I'd rather have. So that's where these sentence starters come in that we're not just giving them individual words and we're not giving them set grammar. We're giving them these phrases, these sort of prescribed phrases that you can use any time you need to agree or disagree and then just make a suggestion and then you just slot in your own language. So this goes again, back to why having a communicative task where they actually have to accomplish something is so important because that's going to create the need for this language. Absolutely. Okay, so we've set a task, we've demonstrated the task, we've given students some helpful language that will allow them to do the task better. Now we're getting into the point where students are getting ready to do the task themselves. However, before we just jump into letting them do it, it's really helpful to give them some preparation time or some brainstorming time. This doesn't have to be extensive, it doesn't have to be a lot, but what you'll find is if there is a communicative goal and in this case, in our example with this party planning task, the students need to agree on what kind of party they want, right? First it's really helpful if they have their own opinion on what kind of party they want because that's going to give them something to argue for. So it's going to create a need to agree or disagree. So really helpful to give the students a couple of minutes first to actually look through the different options for venues and food and whatever. Think about what they want and also think about how they might express those preferences in the language that you've given them. So give them a few minutes, let them come up with their own opinions, let them sort of think through it and then they're gonna be more ready to do the task itself. - Yeah, good. That's a really good point. Giving them as much support before the task so that it's achievable. And we've talked kind of about a lot of stages here and we haven't even really gotten to the speaking task yet. - Right. - There's a lot of prep that goes into it before that. - There is a lot of prep. Do be mindful of your time. Make sure that your lessons aren't too top heavy because what we wanna do is save enough time for students to do the actual speaking task, which is the next stage. So I would say, I want a 45 minute lesson, at least 10 minutes is a good rule of thumb for a speaking task longer if you have a longer lesson. Longer is ideal. The more students speak and contribute to class, the better. So they've done the prep, they're ready. And before giving them the go for the speaking task, make sure that you have assigned pairs or groups or whatever you've decided the interaction pattern there is going to be. We can waste a lot of time on a ceremony in class by actually telling students, oh, just choose your own group, it's fine. We deliberate there. You might want to pair different students in the class with other ones based on whatever you've observed in them previously. Stronger, weaker, quiet, talkative as you wish. So the really important thing to do in your speaking task is be deliberate about grouping and then give a signal, like, okay, begin. And once the students have begun, hopefully, if we've done everything leading up to that point that we've said we're going to do, they won't need us. So you've done that you've already given them the demo of the task and you've already given them some useful language. They've had time to prepare and to think about what they're going to say and now they shouldn't need you. And that's a good thing. Like, you don't want them to have to need you during that task. But does that mean that you completely disappear? Like, what do you do when your students are speaking? So they're in groups, they're engaged. And then the teacher awkwardly stands at the front. Are you sure you there's a better way? So when the students are speaking, monitor them, walk around the classroom, make sure that they're on task. If they have a little question about a vocabulary word or something like that, be on hand to help them, but be careful because there are students that will try and draw you into the conversation and be overly needy or overly dependent on the teacher and you don't want that either. - Right, you don't want to be finishing their sentences for them. This is their time to practice their own fluency. - Absolutely. So I say like, monitor, but be a bit eloof so that they don't think that they can access you the entire time and keep moving around the classroom. So you don't want to just like zero in on one group and give them all your attention and then forget the other half of the class. - Right, even if it's a small class and there's a spot, you know, an empty desk, you can just sit down at for a second where you can hear most of the people in the room fine to just sit there for a second and sort of very subtly monitor from there and take notes on what you're hearing. - Yeah, and so the things that you're listening for just so you don't make sure that the students are actually doing the task. If it seems that one group has gotten completely off of topic, you can go over and remind them, you have five more minutes to make a decision. You have to plan this part. - Exactly. - Exactly. And then also be listening for any errors that are popping up. And I would encourage you not to interrupt the conversation in order to correct the errors on the spot, rather write them down and save them for later in the lesson. And the reason we do this during a squeaking task is that the aim of a squeaking stage in a lesson is squeaking fluency. And in setting up a task for our students to practice fluency, that means that we want them to be able to speak without restrictions, without interruption. And so while error correction is a very, very good thing, it can interrupt fluency activities so that the students are so concerned about the errors that they're making, that they kind of forget about the thing that they're talking about. So great, listen for errors, but write them down. Don't correct them on the spot. - Yes, exactly. So I've seen teachers who like to finish the speaking task and then go right into error correction, but I think there's something else that we should do first. We're gonna get to the error correction, don't worry. But if I'm the teacher, so I've got my errors that I've noted down, hopefully while monitoring. But first, you know, I've made the students do this whole speaking task, so Lauren, what do I do with that first? - Well, so I think that there's a really good reason not to rush into error correction right away. They're written down, they're not gonna go anywhere, right? You've got them, so say them for a second because think about this, if you're a student, right? And you've just done all of this leading up to a speaking task, you're doing this speaking task, right? Now, the teacher-- - They just land our whole party. - The teacher has given a task and that has a communicative goal. Like you told us to negotiate, you told us to suggest, you told us to do whatever. And then the next thing is what? Like you wanna share your results with the class. Like you wanna tell someone else what you've decided. And so that's the next logical step and that's actually the next step in a speaking lesson plan is what we call content feedback or feedback on ideas. And that stage gives the students a chance to report what their group has decided. And the communicative goal and the content feedback stage go hand in hand. So whatever you've set up for that task, whatever the students have decided together, done together or ranked together, or whatever the task is, that's their opportunity then to tell the class what the result was. - Right, so in this case, if the task was plan a party in your groups, then each group now for content feedback needs the opportunity to share the party that they've planned. So, okay, this group, what's your party? What are we doing? Okay, this group, what's your party? What are we doing? So everybody gets to share their different ideas and then we can kind of compare what each group came up with. - Yes, compare and actually what makes us this stage even better is if everyone listening to the groups present their ideas has sort of a reason to listen. And so to push this even further, okay, we're gonna listen to the three groups present their ideas. Let's choose the one that we want to do together. - Yes, so it's a great idea. - Right, so like giving sort of this completion to that stage is nice too. Let's all choose together now of the three ideas what we're gonna do. - Right, exactly. - I do avoid the word best there. Like I really, I try not to say in front of the glass, let's choose the best idea. I just think it's sort of demotivating. So I try to come up with a different way of saying it. Let's choose the one idea that we want to do all together. And for me, it's a preference, but for me, I like it. - Sure, that's fair. - Yeah. - And so yeah, I think that's important that you're getting this content feedback where now the students feel like there was a reason that you made them do this whole thing. There was some sort of result, or sort of reporting back that they had to do. They did something with that idea. Everyone gets to hear everybody else's idea. So it's a really nice way to bring the class back together at the end. So after you've done that, then we can get to that error correction that we've been talking about. A good trick here, even though you know that you're not gonna address the errors until you've done that content feedback, it's still helpful to get them on the board so that they're ready for you when you want them. So what I usually suggest is in the last two minutes maybe of the students speaking task, like before you've stopped the task, you can be sort of subtly writing the errors that you've heard on the board. And then just ignore them until you're ready for them. I know teachers worry that they're gonna be distracting. Like the students are gonna see you writing on the board and then they're gonna be distracted by the stuff you've written on the board. But I found that that's often not the case. As long as they have a communicative goal and you've timed it well, they're gonna be so engaged in that speaking task still that they're probably not gonna pay much attention to you writing on the board. And then if you don't say anything about what you've written on the board and you just ask them for that content feedback instead, okay, tell me about the party that you've planned. They're gonna have other stuff to do. So it'll just sort of be there behind the scenes until you're ready for it. - Absolutely. - So when you are ready for it, then you've got the errors all set for you. You've written the sentences that you've heard up on the board and now you can elicit corrections. I would say if you have time, it's really nice to let the students still talk about these first and pairs or in groups. So you can even tell them you can be very upfront with them. Okay, here are five things that I heard as you were doing the speaking task. One of them is correct, it's a great example and four of them have a mistake. With your partner, try to correct the mistakes. Try to find the one that's correct and then try to correct the mistakes and the other one. So this is a really nice student-centered way to do error correction. If you're running short on time, I would say you could skip that part and just go through them one by one. So sentence number one, where's the mistake? How do we fix it? The nice thing about this is that it still gives you a chance to focus on accuracy a little bit without interrupting the actual fluency part of the speaking task. As we said in the beginning of this episode, the thing with the speaking lesson that you want to avoid, again, is having the students show up, talk about something and then leave, right? So the way we can do this is number one by giving them this nice, clear structure with lots of preparation for the task. Number two, giving them useful language. So even if they could do the task before, well now they can do it even better because they have these great new phrases they can use. And then number three, at the end, if they did make any mistakes or any errors, they're going to have them corrected afterwards. Exactly. So we call this upgrading their language or upgrading their language accuracy after the task. Because we can assume if the focus of the speaking task is fluency, that's great and we want to keep the focus fluency, but they're probably going to make some mistakes. So this is a nice way to then give them that little accuracy boost afterwards. So then finally, that could round out my lesson, that could be the end of my lesson. But ideally, if it's a longer lesson, I have some extra time, what could I do? One idea for extending a speaking lesson is simply having students do the task again. Often, I'll switch up groups, so it's a little bit different and there's a little variation. But giving the students the opportunity to do the task again, it's going to show them that students benefit from repeating the same task. And that they don't actually get bored by doing the same thing again, as long as you change just a little something. So usually changing pairs is enough. Yeah, so for this example that we've been giving with the party planning, you could change up the groups. So everybody has a new group members now. And you could say like, okay, now we have to plan the party again, but this time your budget is doubled. Or this time your budget is cut in half. So you only have half the money this time, you have to plan the party again and you better make sure it's just as good or something. Yeah, and what you'll see is that you don't have to go through all the other stages because you've already been through them, right? And they have access to that useful language that you didn't stuff like that before it. And they might even be better at using it now because this is their second try. Yeah, there are a lot of authors actually that talk about the benefit of this. They'll call like the first time that the students have done the task, the Dressier Horses stage. And I like that. I like the idea of giving the students the opportunity to do something and do it again. I don't know, better or with more confidence, let's say. Exactly. Yeah, and alternative to that structure is maybe the first time you just put the students in pairs. Just brainstorm your idea for the party in pairs. And that's kind of the quote-unquote rehearsal stage. And then next, okay, two pairs get together. And now, when you're before, you have to really plan the official party. But again, doing that little error correction in between helps sort of correct them for the next time around. So any errors, maybe that they made the first time, they've been addressed. And then the next time around, hopefully they're not going to make those errors again. Right. And you know, the benefit, again, going back to the beginning of the episode, when we said this is not a system's lesson, right? Like the goal is not language. The beauty about doing a lot of the language work in this lesson in the error correction stage is that it's not a pre-planned grammar lesson. It's not pre-selective vocabulary. It's feedback on the student's actual language. Right. It's whatever came up naturally. Yeah. And I think that can be super beneficial. It can push our students sort of out of their comfort zone linguistically and help profile them towards the next stage in their progress. Right. And remember that about that useful language we've been talking about as well. So as we said, one of the stages is to give the students these sentence starters that are going to help them do the task. But that's still not the goal. Like the goal is then not for students to perfectly use all these phrases that we've given them for agreeing or disagreeing or making suggestions. We're just giving them those sentence starters or those phrases as helpful tools. Right. That's not the goal. The goal is I want you to be better at speaking than you were when you came in. Right. Here's something that might help you do that these phrases. Yep. Okay. So that is pretty much what a successful speaking lesson might look like. So just to recap, first thing we want to do, of course, is a lead-in. That's going to set the context and just sort of bring up the topic of whatever the lesson is going to be. And then we want to make sure to set the task. So be very clear about what you want students to achieve. And also demo the task. Make sure that that demo is as close represented. No, sorry. Closely mirrors the task that you want the students to do. That's what I want to say. Yes. Can you tell me if I had a busy week? Great. Okay. And then the next thing is to give the students some useful language. And that doesn't necessarily mean grammar over vocabulary. More likely that means some helpful sentence starters that they can use to do this communicative aspect of the task. Good. The next stage is crap time. Don't forget to give students some time to prepare for their speaking task. Then we have the actual speaking task for the students to do the task in pairs or groups. And then after that we want to give the students an opportunity to share their ideas with the class in. We call that stage content feedback. And then we have what is sometimes called language focused feedback, also known as error correction, where we put errors on the board and let the students correct them. And then don't forget you can also. you can always repeat the task if there's time. Okay. So if you haven't ever tried to do a full on speaking lesson, I would encourage you to use these stages and try it. I know that, you know, hopefully if your lessons are effective and you're conscious of your students getting lots of time to speak, then your lessons already include a lot of student talking time. But that doesn't necessarily mean you're teaching full speaking lessons. And I think there is definitely a place for full speaking lessons in a language course. Absolutely. So good luck. Try it out. Let us know how it goes. If you've already been teaching speaking lessons, we would love to hear ideas for your favorite speaking tasks. You can leave them in the comments. There are so, so many different things you can do with this. That's what makes them so much fun. You can really get into it, have fun with it, and make them super authentic. Yeah. Great. And the students love it. I think you'll find, again, if you haven't really tried speaking lessons before, the students get really lively and really engaged, and it's so much fun to monitor and see how much they're enjoying practicing the skill of speaking. Yeah. So let us know. We'd love to know how it goes. Yes. Leave a comment, and we will respond. Okay. Until the next episode. Bye, everybody. Bye. [Music] Thanks for listening. Your support means so much to us. Feel free to leave a comment below. If you enjoyed this, and let us know what you want to hear about in upcoming episodes. If you know other teachers and travelers, we'd love for you to share this podcast with them too. And tune in this coming Tuesday for our next episode. Until then, you can find us at Tefl Horizons.com. Let's keep making this big world smaller by expanding horizons. [Music]